


Held it Like a Mirror

by ssleif



Category: Leverage, Stargate - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Stargate Fusion, Gen, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-24
Updated: 2018-12-24
Packaged: 2019-09-25 21:16:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,989
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17128895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ssleif/pseuds/ssleif
Summary: Eliot's been in a holding pattern ever since his medical discharge sent him back to the hardware store. And thenshewalked in...





	Held it Like a Mirror

**Author's Note:**

  * For [musingmidge77](https://archiveofourown.org/users/musingmidge77/gifts).



> For musingmidge77 who wanted Eliot-Centric, h/c struggling with belonging. Found family, figuring out you belong no matter what you thought. Angst with happy endings. Prompted me with “Elliot said he would have an easier time adjusting to a normal life than the others… I have a feeling He would get bored with normal. What kind of trouble could a civilian Elliot get into?” Hope this one works for you!
> 
> I think it's very readable without much Stargate background, but feel free to hit up my end note if you want that info to start!
> 
> Title is a line from Dear Fellow Traveler, by Sea Wolf, one of my go-to AU inspirations.
> 
>  
> 
> _You spoke my language_  
>  And touched my limbs  
> It wasn't difficult  
> To pull me from myself again  
> And in our travels  
> We found our roads  
> You held it like a mirror, showing me the life I chose

Elliot’s days look like this:

Wake up. Assess pain. Meds, Breakfast, coffee, stretches. Get cleaned up. Put on brace. Assess Pain.

Greet neighbors. Drive truck to hardware store. Sit behind desk. Assist customers, sometimes with mobility aid, sometimes without. Think only about customers. Be friendly and humble when they thank you for your service. Don’t drop the smile when the looks turn pitiful.

Go home. If pain is good, stop for groceries. If pain is bad, just go home. Bring in mail. Take off brace. Make dinner. Work out. PT if leg can take it. Baths and heating pads if it can’t.

Read book. Night meds. Go to bed.

Ignore what ifs. Ignore sadness at bottom of soul that says there is something more. Ignore voice that says you no longer make a difference, to world, to community, to anyone. Remind self that you are only lonely because you want to be. Consider breaking routine. Feel exhausted. Go to sleep.

 

 

 

Some days, Elliot volunteers. He volunteers anywhere that will take him, that will trust him to know his own boundaries and fitness, to not be a liability.

Some days, that’s the boys and girls club. Some days, the humane society. Local shelters. The Catholic Workers’ food bank and kitchen. He’s happiest when doing those things. He likes listening to teenagers. Socializing dogs. Dicing vegetables in a back corner while the sounds of his community being fed echo around him.

But then someone goes missing. Violence. An illness they can’t pay for. Sudden homelessness. Foreclosure.

And he remembers that he lives here now. In this state that does such a shitty job caring for its most vulnerable members. In a country which every day seems more and more content to use its citizens up, for the profit of individuals and big business.

And there’s nothing he can do about it. Shut up. Take your meds. Put on your brace. Keep your head down. Smile.

 

 

 

And then. One day. A change.

She’s small, maybe five and a half feet tall and very slim, Caucasian. Blond, hair back in a tail. Dark jeans, gray hoodie, plain running shoes. Moves quickly and quietly through the store. Doesn’t smile. When they finally make eye contact, she stares and stares. Looks like she’s going to drop the bundle of wire she’s carrying, until he gets uncomfortable and asks if he can help her.

She blinks. Looks at his nametag, back at his face. Puts the wire on the counter. Checks out in silence. Pays cash, from a cheap black nylon wallet, which promptly disappears back into her hoodie. Leaves, looking over her shoulder at him, until she disappears around the corner.

Something about the interaction trips a little alarm circuit in his head, but he isn’t sure what to do about it.

 

 

 

She comes back. Electrical tape, thermal paste, and silicon lubricant.

They still don’t speak.

 

 

 

On the fourth trip, her purchase is large enough (cleans out the copper wire in several gauges; they’ll need to re-order), that she pays with a card. Alice White.

And when she slide the card back into her wallet, he catches sight of another card. BCTC. A Student ID.

She catches him looking.

She smiles, for the first time. It’s beautiful. Just a little grin, no teeth at all, but it lights up her face.

“See you later, Elliot.” She says, as she turns and heads through the door. She waves at him from the other side of the glass.

He goes cold. There is no way her name is Alice White. And his nametag only says “Spencer”.

 

 

 

She does not come back again that week, but he sees another new face. Tall, probably over six foot. Slim, African American, buzz cut, minimal facial hair. Gray jacket over dark henley. Dark jeans covering worn boots.

He catches Elliot’s gaze immediately, raises both eyebrows, grins with about half his mouth, saunters off into the back of the store, saying “Electrical back here? Naw, I see it…”

Eliot sits there, wondering why he feels so off balance. He’s sure he’s never met the man, but it feels like passing a school friend who remembers you, but whom you’ve forgotten.

In a moment, the man is back, thermal paste, solder, 16 gauge insulted copper wire.

“Hey man, how’s it going?”

Elliot tries to shake off his discomfiture.

“Fine.” He remembers to turn on the smile, be personable. “And you?”

“Living the dream, man, living the dream.”

Pays with a card, flashes a University of Kentucky ID. Alan Thomas.

“Student or faculty?” Elliot asks, not sure who gave his mouth permission to keep moving.

“PHD Candidate.”

“Congratulations.” Elliot bags his supplies. “Computer engineering?”

Alan, if that is his name, grins again.

“And robotics.”

Elliot nods.

The man actually shoots him _finger guns_ as he leaves.

Elliot needs a drink.

 

 

 

Alan and Alice, presumably students. It’s possible. If they are new to the area thanks to their respective schools, no one would know them.

And no one does know them, he’s asked.

They come in semi-regularly. Make a little small talk. Disrupt his routine.

Their purchase histories are very similar. Different schools, apparently, but still. He wonders if they know each other. He knows the state university and the technical college next door have some programs together, encouraging students, especially lower income students, to start at the junior college and then transfer to finish out their degrees. And sometimes faculty from one also work part time or are loaned out to the other.

Perhaps Alice and Alan are working on the same project?

They’ve yet to come in at the same time, but Elliot (who hasn’t come up with an explanation for his stirring unease and so is ignoring it) is starting to think he needs to introduce them. Their children would have beautiful cheekbones, and he thinks they might compliment each other’s personalities. Not that he knows either of them well. Just, it’s a feeling, deep in his gut.

He did ask Alan if he knew an Alice white. Alan said he didn’t, and Eliot couldn’t tell if it was true or not.

Which was very unusual for him.

Their visits increased, both in frequency, and in quantity of materials produced, as the semester wound down. Elliot asked after coursework and finals, but neither of them were particularly forthcoming on details, simply implying that their projects were coming to some sort of culmination.

And then a whole week passed, without a visit from either one.

Eliot was a little disheartened, having come to enjoy their company and the stimulation that came from trying to solve their backstories.

As one week carried into two, he admitted to himself that he missed them, her sharp teeth and sharper eyes, his humor and easy conversation. For the first Time, in a long time, Eliot found himself opening up to the kid who had the shift after him, chatting a little about personal matters, trying to fill that void of social interaction.

But he couldn’t.

He sunk himself into his charity work, but it was fast approaching the holiday season, and if ever there was a season where charities didn’t need more volunteers? It was holiday season. Even though they served more folks in that season, there were always plenty and to spare volunteers, trying to “get in the spirit” and assuage their guilt by investing a few extra hours in their community… _maybe_  doing some good.

And then, Alan was back in the shop.

He kind of hemmed and hawwed a while, walk in back to the electronics section, puttering about a moment, crossing to other sections, crossing back.

Finally, after six minutes of Eliot pretending not to watch him, and him pretending to believe Eliot wasn’t watching him. He sauntered back up to the counter… and dropped a pack of gum at the register. Eliot paused, arched an eyebrow.

“What, A man can’t walk into an establishment and buy gum now? Is it because I’m Jewish? Is this antisemitism? I’ll have you know-”

Eliot refused to laugh.

“Did you find everything okay?”

“— that I, No, I did not, and I’d like to complain to the manager that—”

Eliot folded his arms.

“Speaking. What’s the complaint?”

Alan raised both eyebrows and widened his eyes in mock offense.

“Sir, I’ll have you know I have been abused, mightly abused, by one of your employees. I did not come into this fine emporium expecting harassment, sir, but that is what I have found! Harassment! Side-eying of my person, and dirty-looks in regards to my purchases! I have half a mind to take my business elsewhere from now on! You have lost a customer sir!”

Eliot REFUSED to laugh. But he thought he might be in the process of separating a rib.

“My apologies.” Eliot tried to gentle his voice, but it was difficult, through clenched teeth. “I will speak to him. Is there anything we can do to change your mind?”

Alan grinned, ear to ear.

“You can come have dinner with us.”

Elliot’s mind went blank.

“To celebrate! To… do holiday things? I don’t know what you celebrate, it doesn’t have to be denominational, now, My nana was always a firm believer in the Christmas thing, but many other holidays have their place as well, and—”

“Us?” Elliot was finally getting his response back in line, but it just slipped out.

“— I, oh. My… roommate. I have a roommate? I have had a roommate this whole time, even though you are only hearing about her now.”

Alan cleared his throat awkwardly, and looked uncomfortable.

Well, so much for matchmaking.

Eliot took a moment to think through his response. It was… weird. He really didn’t know very much about This man in the first place, despite the friendly interactions they had been building. There were an awful lot of reasons to say no.

On the other hand…

In the end, Elliot decided to tell the truth, surprising himself again.

“No, I have no plans.”

His parents had long since passed, leaving the store to him. He and his brother di not have a relationship. Likely, he would close the shopp for 24 and 25, work the kitchen if they needed hands (sometimes they did and sometimes not, depending on how guilty/obligated other folks felt), and go home and watch die hard and drink eggnog.

Alan looked expectant.

“Aaaaand?”

Eliot rolled his eyes.

“Alright.”

And just like that, his routine broke.

He was… optimistic?

It was an unfamiliar feeling

He kind of liked it.

 

 

 

“I don’t know, woman. I panicked! I had to do something!”

“You didn’t ask me first!”

Parker hit him again.

“Ouch! That’s uncalled for. He’s our friend! Or, well, he was our friend. And alone at Christmas and that’s not okay, when you’re someone that Christmas means stuff to.”

Parker waved her hands, pissed.

“I know that! I know he’s sad! But I wanted to ask him to be our friend for weeks, and you said no! And I trusted you!”

Hardison waved back.

“I’m sorry! I panicked!”

It was true, and they both knew they needed to calm down and do damage control.

“So, so what now?” Parker asked, sitting sadly on the edge of the coffee table in their terrible little, fraudulently rented, apartment. “What do we say?”

Hardison sighed, and sat down on the teeny couch.

“I don’t know. Hi, Eliot, oh yeah us? We know each other from the _alternate timeline where you were our friend and got blown up by aliens_ , would you like some pie?”

Parker looked pensive.

“But I don’t know after that,” Hardison sighed, “because then we’d follow up with ‘that term project we were working on? It’s actually technology cannibalized from an ancient extra-terrestrial civilization. We were only here until we could get back home, and sorry to disrupt your life, but now it’s working again we’ve gotta roll, peace brother?’”

“I don’t like that.”

Parker was frowning, and Hardison, even after five years of saving the galaxy with her, still couldn’t handle her looking sad.

“I don’t like it either.”

He stood, and held out his hand. She took it, and let him pull her into a rare hug.

“He’s our friend, and he’s sad.” She mumbled into his shirt.

“I know.” He just didn’t know what to do about it.

 

 

 

Elliot wasn’t sure where he was expecting Alan to live, but he was pleasantly surprised it was so close. To think, this whole time, the man had been only a block up the street from Elliot’s place.

It was actually almost suspicious that they hadn’t run into each other else where, being so close. Almost, Elliot thought, Alan would have had to have been deliberately avoiding being out and about when Elliot was.

He decided to walk, after a short debate with himself, since it was so close, and in case Alan and his… Roommate. Girlfriend? Roommate. Liked their eggnog strong.

Not that he could have much; it didn’t mix well with his pain meds. But still, just in case.

And as they suddenly found themselves in a slightly warmer spell, for the middle of December, Eliot’s leg was doing surprisingly well. As long as he took it slow, he thought the walk might be nice. Give him an opportunity to let his suspicions air and fade.

And then suddenly he and his mid-shelf red-wine were at the building. And in the elevator. And in front of the door.

… and then Alice opened it.

 

 

 

Elliot looked surprised, then confused, then suspicious and pissed. It was such a familiar expression, Parker wanted almost to cry. The last time she had seen such genuine emotion on his face, he’d been forcing her to run for the gate, to get Hardison off planet, to let him do his job and take care of them. The desperation and fear in his face as he took the first bullet and turned anyway, defended them anyway, had lingered with her for all of the months and years since they had made it back to the SGC without him.

And she saw an echo of that urgency in him now, only just masked under the anger.

And it warned her… but not Hardison, apparently.

Eliot’s face falls, and he drops a wine bottle, deliberately. It doesn’t break on the shitty carpet of their hallway, but starts to roll away in the opposite direction from where Eliot is slowly backing off, away, leaving.

Hardison, lunges past Parker, tries to grab Eliot’s shoulder. His now-free left hand comes up to block the attempt, and Parker tries to pull Hardison back, but he just shoves his way forward again, apparently deciding that if he just holds Eliot still, they can fix it.

It’s the wrong move, and Parker knows it in the moment before Eliot decides Hardison is a threat.

In the next beat, Hardison is groaning in a pile of limbs in the hallway against the wall, and Eliot is panting, spinning, twisting his left leg unnaturally, limping away down the hall. He stumbles, catches himself on the wall, and Parker shouts.

“Eliot, wait! Please! Let us explain.”

Eliot pauses but doesn’t turn around.

“Please, we’re your friends—”

Eliot turns harshly, angry and scared words on his tongue, defensive, terrified of this unknown, of how they’ve gotten so far under his skin and guard when he really, apparently knows noting about them.

And his leg gives out.

He crashes to the floor, braced for the impact, the way it will reverberate through his hands and shoulders, down his spin, further wrenching hs hip—

But it doesn’t come.

“I’ve got you.” Parker whispers from way too close, an arm around his waist and shoulder under his, keeping him upright.

He glares, starts to pull away, realises he really can’t stand on his own now. Goddamn. Fucking. Useless. Leg.

She catches his eye from way too close.

“Please. Please. I keep saying please, but I don’t know if that works. We just want to-”

Eliot tries to take his own weight back, hisses in pain, and then almost growls in anger at himself, at his body.

He doesn’t say anything…

But parker suddenly has an idea. Puts something together. She looks back over at hardison, who is now sitting in a sad heap.

“Hardison-”

Eliot growls at the confirmation that he was right. That he, in fact, didn’t even know their names.

Parker waves her free hand to shush him.

“Hardison. Could we… do it? If we wanted to?”

Hardison groans.

“Do what, woman, I, he just broke my whole body.”

“I didn’t break anything.” Eliot snaps.

“You could have!” Hardison protests, but starts to pick himself up off the floor. “Tossing a man around like he was a sack of-”

“Not unless I was trying.” Eliot grimaces, baring his teeth. “Want me to try-”

“I’d like to see you-!”

“BOYS!”

They both shut up and look at her.

“Eliot.” She looks him dead in the eye. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry we lied, and I’m sorry we didn’t plan this better, but you are our friend-”

“Since when-”

“And we need you, and I think you need us-”

“Oh do you-”

“Hardison,” She looks away from Eliot, dismissing him. “Can you do it?”

Hardison flaps his hands in exasperation.

“Do what??? Fly to the moon? Speak Fluent Klingon and Go’auld? Build a-” and he gets it. “OH! IT! OH yes, Oh, oh baby, oh that's-”

Parker grins.

“I know, I make the best plans.”

“No.” He points an accusatory finger at her. “You make terrible plans, bug fuck crazy plans, but this…”

“Can you?”

He rolls his eyes.

“What kind of question is that? Of course I can. And no double, we should just be able to…”

And Elliot is very sure, suddenly, that these two are going to kill him. Or get him killed.

And he’s also very sure, suddenly, that it will be okay.

 

Several Hours later, Eliot is sitting on their shitty couch, drinking shitty tea, staring through an open door at what appears to be a computer with half of his hardware store tacked onto it, wondering why he believes them when they say they are Alec Hardison, and Parker no-other-name-and-isn’t-that-suspicious.

“You want…” He trails off, thrown.

“We want you to come with us.”

“To your imaginary place?”

“No.”

“Yes.”

Parker and Hardison glare at each other.

Hardison sighs, and turns back o Eliot.

“Are you at least willing to see? Let us fire it up and see if that proves anything to you?”

God help him, Eliot nods.

Hardison fist pumps.

….the machine totally works.

Or at least, it turns on. And Eliot sees on the screen… he sees strange things, he sees himself, and them. He sees things that have never happened, and could never happen. Hardison taps a key and the image shifts, and there’s the three of them again. And again. And again.

“The algorithm is examining nearby universes, checking for us. The universe we want shouldn’t be far away, and also shouldn’t have us in it. Because we are here.”

“And I’m dead.”

“Because little green men.”

“Well, they’re not green-”

Parker cuts him off.

“Yes. Because aliens shot you, while you saved our lives.”

“… so why do I want to go there again?”

Parker looks sad, bu there is such feeling in her voice, such hope, that Eliot is riveted.

“Because you belong there. You belong with us. We’re a team, and we are best when we are a team. We let you down once, and maybe we don’t deserve you again, but you deserve better than this!”

Eliot is a little offended, but Parker just keeps going.

“You are okay. But you could be better than okay. You could be really really great. In our world, you have us, you have people that know how good you are, and give you challenges. You can do all kinds of really big things-”

“Saving the world- type-big.” Hardison murmurs, not looking up from the keyboard and screen.

Eliot cuts them off.

“Not with my injuries. They sent me home, remember? All my years and skill, and then I screwed up, or they screwed me over, and then they threw me out-”

“We can fix it!”

Parker looked as surprised as they did, that she had yelled.

“Eliot, we can fix it. We have technology that you don’t have here-”

“Are you sure? How can you know that?”

Hardison paused, and looked up.

“We can’t know for sure. But we tried just about everything, including breaking into the super-secret-top-intelligence military based that was headquaters of our program in our universe… and nothing. And even though it was secret, there were still leaks, places you could find things out, sources we knew might crumble under pressure or the right price… and nothing. Here, nothing.”

He sighed.

“Maybe the program exists here, but it just looks really different. Maybe there are no aliens at all. We don’t know, and I don’t think we can know. Even if the program does exist here, or did, it looks like Parker and I have been super dead for quite a few years. Also were wanted by like a million agencies in a bunch of different countries for all kinds of crimes. So. We might have a challenge making folks believe we were on their side and not fugitives.”

“But in our universe,” Parker picked up the thread, sitting down next to Elliot on the couch again, “they know us. They trust us. They need us. And they need you.” She took his hand, the one not holing a cup of tea. “WE need you. So the question is, do you want us? What is keeping you here, and is it better than this chance?”

She searched his face.

“If we are wrong, and you are really happy here, then we’ll go.”

She let his hand free.

“We’ll go and, and we’ll b sad, but…”

Hardison set down the keyboard, and rolled his chair back into the living room, next to Parker.

“But we’ll understand, man. And like we said, you deserve good things. Not gonna lie, there’s as much nasty stuff as there is awesome stuff in our universe, and you wouldn’t be crazy to just sit it out… but we had to try.”

They both look at Elliot with huge, naive, hopeful faces.

“I need to think about it.”

 

  
They tell him they can give him two days. After 48 hours, they need to go, or else… well, he didn’t really follow what, but something bad.

Forty eight hours.

He goes home. Takes off his brace. Takes his pills. Tries to sleep. Can’t. Thinks about them. Thinks about maybe not hurting anymore. Thinks about aliens and a fight to save the whole stupid planet. Thinks about them.

Gets out of bed.

Starts making phone calls.

 

 

Forty five hours later, Parker and Hardison are busy rigging the tech to blow after they use it, leave no ancient shit behind.

There’s a knock on their door.

He’s standing there, a small duffel over one shoulder, crutch under the other.

They take their boy home.

 

 

PS: They fix his leg.

PPS: Not the first time the SG program have had to un-dead someone. They’re very happy to do it.

PPPS: Turns out, 95% of Eliot and Eliot’s pasts are shared, except that Stargate!Eliot’s last black-ops mission ended, not with him being invalided home, or with him going freelance for Damien Moreau, but instead killing some Go’auld-infested military brass, and getting picked up by the SGC.

So they are mostly the same person.

Eliot fucking loves it, and very rapidly comes to understand why his counterpart laid down his life.

And thanks him for it, silently, for the opportunity.

To talk to alien teenagers. Meet alien dogs. Take care of people all across the fucking galaxy. Take care of his team.

His team.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Stargate: Basically a military scifi series where world govts run programs of military-structured teams and researchers and the like who explore/save/blow up parts of the galaxy. top secret, lots of smart, capable, singular ppl recruited and working for the program. in the original series, "gate teams" of four-ish folks ran missions to other planets, and brought back alien tech, and aliens, for the scientists to learn from. shenanigans ensued. Oh, and some of the bad aliens are called Go'auld and are like Yeerks from Animorphs, slug-type-things that symbiotically bind to host brainstems and control them. Good stuff.
> 
> Several episodes explored alternate universes and the consistent plot devices were: 1. it is hard to control which parallel dimension you end up in and 2. Death by entropic cascade if you spend too much time in a universe that already has a copy of you/is not your universe. ala many other scifi properties.
> 
> Basically I hit on the image of miserable vet Eliot getting over-invested in these two yahoos who keep buying weird shit at his store. but then I needed a reason for them to be doing that... and, y'know, aliens. always the simplest explanation.
> 
> ...
> 
> okay, and further backstory that didn't make it in: 
> 
> Eliot's folks died and left him the store, not too terribly long after he was back stateside. 
> 
> Some of his melencholy is exacerbated by the fact that his only employees are a couple of kids who are graduating soon and moving on. He's happy for them, but it makes him all the more lonely. 
> 
> When he decides to go, he donates whole business, building, stock, ownership to catholic worker oragnization/youth program. And all his savings. And his apartment. Contacts a lawyer he knows, who he has tagged to assist difficult kid stuff in the past. Says he’s going somewhere, he can’t say where. When they guy gets worried, thinking suicide, Eliot reassures him. "No. I… think of it like the govt reactivated me. There’s an experimental treatment I want to try, and if it works, I’ll be active again, and if it doesn’t I’ll settle wherever I end up. But I definitely wont be maintaining my assets here."
> 
> "So give them to the kids. Give it all to the kids."


End file.
